“A perspective on health politics in companies - a Foucault inspired analysis”
written by Camilla Nilles
Aalborg University
2011

The subject of this thesis is health politics and how this effects companies. The health politics are used in a model of three levels: the state, the company and the employees. These three levels are part of society and inflict on each other. Therefore the purpose of this research is to investigate the powermechanisms and primarely how these work between state and company.

The thesis statement is: “Which influence, does the concept health politics, have on the company, when being part of a tension field between state, company and employees, based on the publication of health politics from the danish National Board of Health and an analysis and discussion with the use of Foucaults theoretical terms.”

The main theoretician of this thesis is the French historian and filosopher Michel Foucault. The other theoreticians include sociologist Mitchell Dean and sociologist Carol Axtell Ray, whom are used in a discussion. Thus the thesis include a declaration of some of Foucaults terms, e.g. power, subject, bio-power and parts of his discoursetheory. These will be used in analysing the empirical data; a publication from the danish National Board of Health called “Health and job satisfaction at the workplace”, which purpose is to help companies implement health and take a responsibility in their employees. Results of this analysis are discussed togehter with articles written by Mitchell Dean and Carol Axtell Ray, where terms like culture governance and corporate culture present an interesting perspective on how culture can work as an invisible power sinking into the values and identities of the employees.

The results of this research are that health politics become the danish National Board of Healths’ strategic tool in the form of biopolitics, a term combining the biology of people and scientific calculations e.g. economy. This is all part of an overall dispositive “Health increases productivity”. But this idea of health politics has its roots in a health culture, which is founded by the individuals in a globalised society, where culture governance is the solution to an increased globalisation, where there is no central form of power. Therefore this health culture is the cause of the health politics, which works through the state as disciplinary tools towards the companies, who must take responsibility for the employees in making them more healthy, but from the perspective of increasing productivity.

This thesis presents a basis for a further look onto how health politics can effect the employees of these companies.